Right

... were using the book as a textbook.

I started getting calls.

"Would you sit down with our seminary class that we're reading your book?" So I spent a lot of time on Zoom actually interacting with readers [clears throat] that were practitioners, and it was just a remarkable experience.

[clears throat] And I, um, so I, so I, I learned some really interesting things, and one of the things I realized is that most people, discipleship is read your Bible, pray, go to church regularly, share your faith, and if you have an income, tithe, right?

Mm-hmm.

And th- there was still, Peter was still really fragile in the Garden.

And so one of the things that's missing, I think, in our discipleship is this idea of what our goal is.

What have you advised them to do or what would you say to them?

So when I wrote Faith for the Curious, I started having churches invite me in to talk to their people and to think about how they could, you know, how do we do better in engaging people that are spiritually curious? Sadly, a lot of people haven't really experienced Jesus themselves in our churches.

They have basically decided, I believe this, right? but they haven't actually been changed by it themselves.

And that's the interesting thing about Christianity is you can believe that Jesus died on the cross for your sin, but to actually experience Jesus and to trust him, that was the work he was doing with his disciples.

He was really helping them trust him.

There's a proverb that says, you know, um, um, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding.

And I find in my own spiritual journey that When I'm at my worst, it's because I'm standing on my own two feet and I'm not literally leaning, putting my weight, the weight of my life, trusting in God.

Yep.

Right

... where we have this norm, and then we have these zones of experimentation, these little spaces where we're willing to stretch.

And, um, and sometimes when we walk into some environments, they're stretching us too much.

And so when that happens, what we feel is alienated.

Um, we can feel anger.

Uh, we can feel humiliation.

All these weird feelings that come up when we get outside of what we're comfortable with to, you know, experiment with challenging the norm of our experience.

Hmm.

What other phrases would we hear in this discussion about missions and globalization? And does it even mean anything anymore?

I always say one of my postures of a global Christian is the ends of the earth depend on where you're standing.

So I was in Nairobi with about 3,000 college students that were kind of asking the question that we ask at Urbana.

In fact, the event that we were having in Kenya actually was birthed out of Urbana.

Some Kenyan college students came to Urbana in 1987, said, we need to do one of these in our own country.

And so they started an event called Commission, Callisto, Odede, and some others.

And, um, and so they've been doing that every three years since 1988.

We haven't

met yet.

Well, we actually did.

My first day on the job at staff conference.

Staff conference, you're right.

There was a lot going on that day.

Yes, you're right.

I forgot about that.